Petrified
by HarryGinnyMustLiveOn
Summary: Ginny has sat in the hospital chair for almost a year, holding his hand. But some new information has come to light that might help. Will she be able to find the person who did this?


Molly looked through the glass of the St. Mungo's room door. In the chair sat her red-haired daughter, holding hands with the lifeless figure on the bed. Every day for the past year it had been like this. Ginny would get up in the morning from her own small house and Apparate to St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. There, she would sit down in the chair next to the bed, and hold the cool hand of the patient that lay there. She would stay there all day, barely eating, and would not leave until late that evening, sometimes even staying overnight if she fell asleep in the chair. The staff had come to leave her alone if she stayed late. The one and only time a Healer tried to convince her to go home, they received a swift Bat-Bogey Hex for even suggesting such a thing. Molly sighed at the thought, but she did suppose that there was no-one to blame but herself. After all, Ginny was her only daughter. She sighed and pushed open the door.

Ginny looked up as she heard the door open, but didn't move her hand. Recognising the figure as her mother, she sighed, knowing what was coming.

"Mum," she said curtly. _A comma is appropriate since the sentence doesn't end yet. The pronoun is not capitalized._

"Hello Ginny dear. Any progress today?"

"Progress? How can they make progress when they don't even care!"

"They do care Ginny, but they have a whole hospital full of people to help."

"Well that's all fine for them then isn't it! He saves the entire Wizarding World, but then as soon as something happens to him, it's totally fine to just stick him in the loonies ward of St. Mungo's!" Ginny shrieked. She had been building this up for a while, and it was simply unfortunate luck that it was her mother on the receiving end.

"Ginny! They are doing things! I'm sure of it."

"Pfft. Sure thing. They come in, wave their wand, make sure he's still 'technically' alive, and then walk out again," she said, irritated, then mumbled, "Doing things..."

Molly softened, she could see her daughter was very worked up. "Why don't you come home, I'll fix you a nice meal, and you can relax for a few hours."

Ginny clenched her teeth and gripped her wand, but decided it was in her own best interests not to hex her mother. "No mum. I'm here. I can't relax while he's in here. I can't eat, I can't sleep. Not until he leaves this bed."

Molly shook her head gently. "Alright dear, but you know where we are. Your father misses seeing you for Sunday lunch."

"Give him a hug for me Mum, maybe I'll be home soon." Ginny then turned away from her mother, facing her attention back to the limp body on the bed next to her.

Molly quietly left the room. She didn't want to push Ginny too far in one day.

Ginny glanced up as the door closed with a click, then turned back to the bed. How she longed to feel his embrace again. To hear him whisper soft words into her ear as they fell asleep together. Her mind wandered back to the day she had found him like this. It was a year after the war. Voldemort was defeated, and the surviving Death Eaters were being rounded up. Everyone thought they were happy and safe. Harry had stopped worrying that Voldemort could use his love for Ginny against him, and had finally made his move properly. They dove into a relationship together, as many people had expected, and to the happiness of much of her family and their friends.

Harry had taken some time off doing anything, but was thinking about becoming an Auror. They had discussed their future plans for night after night, and Auror was the profession they found themselves coming back to for him. Not that he needed the money, but he would go crazy just sitting around all day.

-

Harry had been living alone in an apartment in London for a few months, regularly visiting the Weasleys, and having Ginny come over and stay regularly. That hadn't been popular with her brothers at the start, but a few well-placed hexes had soon put an end to that nonsense.

_Paragraph break._  
One night, Ginny had Flooed over and landed in his living room, to see a lifeless body on the floor. No marks, no spills, no evidence. Absolutely nothing. Just a lifeless body. At first, she didn't know what to do. She had gone over to check who it was, but she already knew. It was Harry. He appeared to be dead.

"No! Harry! You can't be dead! Not now! Not yet!" she had cried softly to herself.

She gripped his body as tightly as she could, and willed herself to St. Mungo's. A risky move, she reflected now. She could have splinched herself, but it had to be done.

She turned up in the St. Mungo's reception, and fell to the floor as the weight of Harry's body pulled her down.

"Help! Help me!" she screamed. "Something happened!"

In an instant, she was surrounded by a swoop of Healers, their lime green robes swishing around.

"What happened?" she remembered one of them asking.

"I went to Harry's house and there he was...on the floor.. like this," she spluttered.

The next thing she knew, he was being levitated up the stairs to room 4.9.

She managed to pull herself together enough to stand up, and for a single coherent thought to form: 'Tell the Order,' her brain told her. Her face tear-streaked but mission-oriented, she mustered all her thoughts, and then she was being pulled through a tight, invisible tube to the park across from Grimmauld Place. She marched across the road, the house beginning to show, and pushed the door wide open.

"MUM! HARRY'S BEEN HURT! I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S HAPPENED!" she yelled with a voice that only the youngest of seven would be able to muster. She heard footsteps coming down the stairs, and a voice coming from the kitchen.

"What?!" her mother's voice rang out.

"Harry!" She walked to the kitchen, and shortly behind her in came Kingsley Shacklebolt. "It's Harry. He's been hurt somehow. He's at St. Mungo's. I don't know what's wrong with him. I Flooed over there and found him like that. I..." she started to break down a bit. "I'm not even sure he's still alive."

Kingsley nodded to Molly, and then was swiftly out the door again.

"Ginny dear, I'm sure he'll be fine. It can't be that serious."

Ginny looked at her mother with a fire in her eyes. "YOU DIDN'T SEE HIM MUM. YOU DON'T KNOW THAT!"

Immediately, Molly looked away.

"Sorry dear. Why don't you go on to the hospital, and I'll let the others know?"

Ginny trembled slightly as tears and sadness wreaked through her body, and then slowed moved towards the fireplace. A pinch of Floo Powder, and she was there.

She went over to the reception witch. "I... I brought Harry Potter in earlier. C... c... can you tell me what happened to him?"

"Name?" she said, without looking up.

"Ginny Weasley."

"Relationship?"

"Girlfriend." Ginny was almost fed up with this question time already. They had her boyfriend, who may or may not be dead right now, and they were just fiddling around?!

"Do you- "

"NO! N ow let me up there to see him right now!"

The witch finally looked up at Ginny and sighed.

"Room 4.9. Fourth floor, fifth door on the right."

Ginny walked away without a word. There were too many thoughts. Room 4.9? That was the spell damage ward. Severe spell damage ward. She cursed under her breath and swept up the stairs until she reached the fourth floor, and began to count the doors as she walked along.

"One... Two... Three... Four... Five."

She stopped and looked at the door. The brass numbers read 4.9. She took a deep breath, then looked through the glass. There were two Healers in there, and a body. A tall, young, raven-haired body to be more precise. She gulped and opened the door.

"Hello?"

One of the Healers turned to look at her. "And you are?"

"Ginny Weasley. His girlfriend."

"Ah. Very interesting. But in any case, you will have to come back later. He is in no fit state for guests right now."

Ginny started bubbling away already.

"NO FIT STATE? NO FIT STATE! I FOUND HIM YOU NUMB SKULL! I KNOW THAT!"

She held on to her wand tightly.

"Oh!" he said, his face draining of colour, his eyes flicking toward the other Healer in the room.

"Mr. Potter is..."

The other Healer cut him off. "Sorry Ginny. We're not sure what's wrong yet. He's alive, but only just. He seems... paralysed, almost."

The voice sounded familiar to her, and she looked up. "Parvati!"

Parvarti chuckled. "Yes, it's me. You planning on yelling at me like you like yelled at the best Healer in the country?"

Ginny blushed. "My apologies sir."

The Healer looked up at her. "Accepted. Now, allow me to introduce myself. I am Hippocrates Smethwyck. You might remember me from when your father was ill?"

Ginny averted her gaze. She was embarrassed now. Still annoyed, but rather embarrassed.

"Yes sir."

"Mr. Potter is in a serious state. We can keep him alive, but we have to figure out how to bring him back." He sucked in a deep breath. "He appears to be suffering some form of paralysis or petrification, but as yet no spells nor potions appear to be curing it. We will keep him here until we find a cure, but there is only so much we can try each day without killing him."

And so they had. They had tried various spells, potions, anything they could find. Nothing was working. And so whilst there were researchers, they just checked on him every day to ensure he was still doing okay, and that was how he was still lying here, almost one year later on from the day she brought him in.

-

"Grr," she grumbled. She couldn't believe that still nothing had happened. She couldn't really blame anyone though. They'd tried what they could. The only reasonable explanation Ginny had left was that he had been cursed by some awful Death Eater with an invented spell, and if that was the case, she decided, she was going to track them down.

She started thinking through ways she could start to hunt down the Death Eaters, when the door opened again.

"What do you want now?" she said, thinking it was her mother again.

"Erm, excuse me?" came a deeper, male voice.

"Oh! Sorry Healer Smethwyck... I, er... I thought you were somebody else."

"Apparently..." he said dryly. "We've been taking another look at the scans we did of Mr. Potter, and with fresh eyes, it appears that there is a small mark under the skin on his back that we missed. We suspect it is a mark from the curse, but what curse? We don't know. We can't tell anything about it."

Ginny sighed. "Thank you."

The Healer turned and left, and Ginny made up her mind. She was going to have to go Death Eater hunting.


End file.
